Jilling Off

Confession 101

So many wonderful women revealed so many intimate things for this piece; I felt it only fair to make a public confession of my own: I stole a book from the library when I was about 15.

I still have it somewhere, actually – tucked away in the very same box in which I stowed letters and cards and other private tokens of teendom. It was a smallish tome with a swirly pink psychedelic pattern on the cover, its practical title displayed in a conversely garish font ubiquitous for its 1975 publication date. It was called To Turn You On: 39 Sex Fantasies for Women by J. Aphrodite. The very idea of purpose-written literary porn was alluring enough to create a delicate buzz between my thighs. My clitoris and I had been subsisting on snippets of Judy Blume and Jackie Collins for far too long.

I was an exceedingly horny teenager—my actual experience at that point was limited to a few semi-awkward ventures that hovered around the third-base mark—but a teenager nonetheless. There was no way I was walking up to the counter and handing that book to the librarian. Not a chance. Lucky for me, I was 15 before the age of electronic theft detection. I stuffed it into my backpack and made for home.

The tone of the author’s foreword was magnificently ’70s, a heady soup of feminine empowerment. I could practically hear her reading it to me, a soft, sexy, sonorous version of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, issuing a captivating caveat that certain selections inside explored taboo topics that could be construed as frightening or offensive to some, but that without allowing ourselves to delve into the forbidden, without really letting our minds meander, safely and shamelessly, anywhere they might want to go, our fantasies really couldn’t be our own. It really delivered on that promise, too. Stories ran the gamut from being orally stimulated by the gynecologist to hooking up with your best friend’s husband to jacking off your own brother. No, I’m not kidding.

Oh, we had some good times together, me and that book, yes indeed. For some reason I feel compelled to add that I don’t have a brother.

I was an early self-explorer for sure—I have memories of bringing myself to orgasm as early as first or second grade—but the heady cocktail of pubescent hormones, bonafide male attention, and a book that gave my already-fertile imagination license to go anywhere without reproach, certainly set me on a path to… well, to becoming a sex writer, I suppose.

Thing is, I’ve never been shy about admitting I touched my naughty bits or talking about my past experiences. And while (in terms of research) it’s generally been easy to get men to talk to me about what they’ve been up to, alone or otherwise, it hasn’t always been the same with the ladies. Until now. Imagine my shock when it was the women—ranging in age from 20 to 63—who clamored to tell me all manner of secrets about the whys, whats, wheres and ways in which they pleasure themselves.

We really have come a long way, baby.

Christina J: The Little Engine Who Couldn’t

No, I didn’t make her up.

Christina, 33, is a married mother of one. She considers herself a sexual person, though not sexually aggressive. “More often than not, my husband initiates sex, but that’s something I’m working on.”

The first time she felt anything “down there” was while watching Dirty Dancing when it came out on video. “I was about 12 or 13. There was a tingling I’d never felt before and it was nice, but I didn’t do anything about it—partly, she says, because she shared a room with two younger sisters in a small New York apartment. There was a distinct lack of privacy. “But I don’t think it even occurred to me that I could or should touch myself. My sexuality was totally non-existent.”

Although she had some pleasurable encounters riding stationary bikes in her teens, orgasm eluded her. She discovered masturbation in college, “mostly for my boyfriend at the time,” she admits. “Although I later did it on my own, it never worked for me … and so I never liked it, although I wanted to.”

Christina has not masturbated in a decade. “I never felt very good at it. I never achieved orgasm from it and it always felt like I was doing it wrong. I know it’s my body and I should know, but I’ve always had far more success with a partner’s stimulation than my own. As a feminist, that seems awful. I have nothing against masturbation. It probably has something to do with my perfectionism. I don’t like to do things unless I know I’m going to do them well. Fear of failure leads to avoidance of situations where I might not succeed.”

She likens the situation to a city girl’s lack of driving skills. “I really like it, but I don’t have a lot of experience, so I’m not that good at it, so I don’t do it that often, so I don’t get better at it! I just want to skip to the part where I’m a good driver—and can make myself come—without all the awkward practice!”

You wouldn’t think a person of infrequent orgasm would have such a good sense of humor, would you? She hopes the experience of telling the story will inspire her. “I’m more confident now than when I was younger. I know my body a lot better. I have a vibrator—a Valentine’s gift from my husband—and I think I may give it a try!”

Heidi, 35, never masturbated before she was sexually active. “For me, those two things came together. And I find that the more sexually active I am, the more I masturbate. All or nothing, I guess.”

The married mother of two says she definitely enjoys sex, and is much more comfortable with exploration now that she’s a little older and wiser, but it was a “very fun husband” who turned her on to the joys of toys. “I hadn’t watched porn or used toys until I was married,” she laughs. “What a prude! I’m so far from that now, but I would not have done them with someone I didn’t trust completely.”

For Heidi, ritualistic self-pleasure has little to do with what she might be fantasizing about. It’s based entirely on physical touch. “The way I do it is always the same,” she says. “I get a lot of pleasure from pressure on my clitoral hood.” Since having this sensitive little organ pierced, she found that some new choreography was necessary to get the job done, “but the pressure, circles, pace and pattern are always the same. Slow to begin with, then faster as I get wetter.”

What gets her to the point of wanting to touch? “I can have a visual trigger, but generally it’s an auditory one. Hearing other people in pleasure will get me every time.” She also likes to watch and be watched, and enjoys mutual masturbation with her husband. “I love to watch men touch themselves in person. On television it’s not that great—probably because it’s usually followed by a big wad of cum all over the girl’s face, which is totally disgusting to me. But in person? Mmmm. I like to observe the pace and listen as his breathing changes. If I’m getting to pleasure myself at the same time, it’s an awesome orgasm.”

Ruby is a newlywed, but marriage thus far leaves her sexual habits unaffected. “Around ovulation I notice my perception starting to skew,” she admits. “I notice my male coworkers’ mouths and think about them as sensual kissers—which is something my husband and I don’t do that often now that we’re married, even during sex. It’s always a whim and gone in a moment, but it makes me flush and want to try and resurrect the moment when I see him later, but alas, it never happens.”

She describes their relationship as “fabulous and playful” but admits they’ve fallen into something of a sexual pattern. “I want him to dominate me; he wants me to dominate him. Stalemate? I still have a great deal of those silly bachelorette-party gifts in a shopping bag in my closet that I wonder how to integrate into our sex. Sometimes I think I’m too much of a feminist and this gets in my way.”

As for self-love, however, its frequency remains unaffected, whether she’s getting some or not. Her regular method comes with an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Lay down in the bathtub on your back, lift your legs so they are flush and parallel against the wall.” Position your girl parts under the faucet and let it flow, adjusting pressure and temperature accordingly.

“I think it’s a nice way of simulating oral sex,” she says. Other recommendations? “At my craziest, I would tie my own ankles with a silk scarf, bend over a yoga ball and use a whip on my own ass while stimulating my clitoris. Have you ever tried Altoids? Lick one and rub it on your clit for added pleasure.”

Men might be surprised to find that many women employ masturbation as a sleep aid. And while she may find the process pleasurable, Athena, 32 and married (no kids), can be utilitarian about it. “Since there is a purpose, it’s almost like a procedure and I do find that in these instances my mind goes to the same scenarios. My method varies, for sure, but it’s never premeditated. It all falls into place once I start moving my hand into my panties.”

Krista, 20, is pure as the driven snow. Sort of. “I don’t listen to the Jonas Brothers,” she laughs. “It’s not like I’ve got a purity ring on. I just haven’t met anyone I’ve wanted to go all the way with. I don’t think I’m too picky. But I do believe in chemistry and it seems like the longer I am the semi-reluctant virgin, the harder it is to find someone worth sleeping with. As it is, I’m ravenously horny, all the time, and I usually masturbate once or twice a day.”

On her two-fer days, she finds it to be the perfect sleeping pill. “How else am I supposed to stay focused on work or school? I have to get the ya-yas out so I can get some rest.”

Stella and her husband, both in their 50s, have children who are in college. “I am finally having the sex I’m supposed to be having now that they’re mostly out of the house!” she laughs. “As a consequence, my diddle-habits are falling off the charts. I relied on masturbation as my main source of sexual pleasure for almost two decades—not because it was the preferred method, but because it was the most accessible!”

As young parents, the pair often had to deal with small children crawling into their bed during what was supposed to be private time. “I can’t count how many times we were interrupted mid-thrust,” she laughs. “It’s funny now because it’s in the past. There were honestly moments where I was so close to climaxing I wanted to scream at them to get out! Makes me sound like such a meanie, I know. But when you’re desperate for that one-on-one time with your partner, that selfish part of you wants to act out.”

Stella’s sweet mommy side always won out, but it did make her sex life suffer. “Playing with myself was mostly a shower-time ritual, often before work. Slippery, soapy hands roamed and helped the process along. And when I got my first WaterPik shower massager—the one on the hose so you could direct the spray right where you wanted it? I’d hop right out of bed with no hesitation in the morning!”

One morning, years into the ritual she’d never shared with her husband, he caught her wet-handed as he came in to shave. “That started a whole new ritual that solved the nighttime issues we were having,” she laughs. “We shower together almost every morning to this day. I only wish we’d thought of it sooner!”

Betty chose her pseudonym as a tribute to the great American sex educator Betty Dodson, Ph. D, whom she credits for her first orgasm, “and every one subsequent, if you get right down to it.”

Betty was a college student in 1974 when she brushed up hard against the women’s’ sexual revolution, but she was older than her classmates, and burdened with responsibility that hindered her involvement with the free-loving war protesters.

“I was in my late 20s, married and had a young child when I went to school. Even though I came of age in the 1960s, I came from a conservative Midwestern background. The hippy thing was frowned-upon where I grew up for the most part. I married my high school sweetheart as a virgin, and was pregnant before I could grow out of my insecurities with my body and my sexuality.

“I was in class and there were two girls whispering about [Dodson’s book] Liberating Masturbation,” she says. “One of them had taken it to bed with her boyfriend the night before. She was telling her friend about the vaginal diagrams inside, how they’d looked at them together, how he’d spread her open and explored her, touching her, kissing her…. I’m actually getting flushed recounting this now,” she admits, “a hundred years later!”

Betty bought the book that afternoon, took it home, and read it that night in the bathroom. “I made myself climax in the bathtub,” she says. “From there, I was a teenage boy. I couldn’t keep my hands out of my pants. I had a lot of catching up to do, but I still managed to graduate!”

Jokes aside, Betty’s newfound comfort alone with herself didn’t help her marriage. “I still didn’t feel comfortable enough to share what I’d learned with my husband.” They divorced a few years later. “I was happy to keep myself happy and bought an [here she makes ‘air quotes’] electric massager at the pharmacy the day I signed the lease on my apartment. All these years later I have had quite a few more lovers, right up to my current live-in boyfriend of 11 years, who indeed feels like the soul mate I longed for as that young, clueless, sexually frustrated newlywed, but after discovering what I could do for myself, I never worried about what a man could or couldn’t do for me in the bedroom.”